This invention relates to auscultation or listening to sounds in the chest, abdomen and other parts of the anatomy to enable determination of the condition of the heart, lungs, etc., by physicians, veterinarians and other medical personnel including medical students.
The use of stethoscopes by medical personnel for sound listening diagnosis, if of course, well known. Because of its limitations, the traditional stethoscope does not enable the physician to discriminate between and select sound frequencies of diagnostic value. Further, traditional stethoscopes cannot cope with the wide range of signal amplitudes which call for variable amplification and distortion free audio reproduction. An instrument capable of providing the necessary operational characteristics and functional control for overcoming the limitations of the traditional stethoscope, without sacrifice of its efficiency, has been proposed and is generally referred to as an ausculscope.
It is, therefore, an important object of the present invention to provide a portable ausculscope apparatus for processing sound signals picked up by chest piece microphones, transducers or the like to be reproduced through earphone speakers and other audio reproducing equipment, such apparatus having automatic gain control, frequency bandpass discrimination and amplitude adjustment capabilities to enable frequency selection, sound enhancement and unwanted noise elemination for more accurate and meaningful medical diagnosis purposes.